The Founders
The co-founders of the Homeless World Cup are Mel Young from Scotland and Austrian Harald Schmied. They came up with the idea following a conference about homelessness in 2001. They wanted to change the lives of homeless people through football. The first annual Homeless World Cup tournament was taking place in Graz in 2003.
Mel Young
Mel Young is recognised as one of the world's leading social entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. He is a Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum.
Mel previously worked as a journalist; co-founded The Big Issue in Scotland in 1993; co-founded Senscot (Social Entrepreneurs Network Scotland); former President and Honorary President of INSP (International Network of Street Papers).
He also set up City Lynx magazine and New Consumer Magazine; worked on a community newspaper in Wester Hailes in Edinburgh in 1990’s.
He is currently the President of the Homeless World Cup which he co-founded in 2003. Also a non-executive director on two boards: Sportscotland and Glasgow Life; member of the World Economic Forum Sports Agenda Council.
He has been awarded three honorary degrees from Scottish Universities.
He is a lifelong supporter of Hibernian FC and is the author of Goal: The story of the Homeless World Cup.
Harald Schmied
Harald Schmied studied History and German and began to work as a journalist. He became chief-editor of Megaphon, a streetpaper in Graz, Austria.
Schmied worked as Chief Executive for the second Homeless World Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden.
He then moved on to become Head of PR and Fundraising for Caritas Styria.
Schmied was awarded with the Styrian Human Rights Prize.